VICTORIAN UNIONS are organising to defend the right to strike, following Kevin Rudd's decision to include secret ballot provisions in Labor's industrial relations policy.Under these provisions, unions will be forced to hold secret ballots prior to taking strike action.

In practice, this would mean that workers would have to wait weeks for the Electoral Commission to intervene, giving employers the time to prepare for strike action by shifting production elsewhere or organising non-union labour.

The policy must be challenged, according to leaders of the communications and postal workers union (CEPU) and the electrical trades union (ETU) in Victoria:

"What sort of system is it that accepts that neither of the political parties that can reasonably expect to form government will guarantee one of the most internationally recognised, basic human and democratic rights for workers, and that is the right to strike?

"The employers have the right to invest or not invest, the right to introduce or not introduce new technology, the right to hire and fire, the right to create conditions of fear and insecurity at work, the right to refuse to negotiate with or recognise workers unions and so on".

"The right to strike in Australia must be won".

"We see this as a long term campaign which should begin immediately. The objective is to build such widespread public support for the principle, that it can no longer be ignored by the major political parties."

These unions are establishing a coalition in Melbourne to defend the right to strike.

The coalition deserves the support of every unionist across the country.

"Even if a Labor government exceeds all our expectations, it is not likely to restore workers' rights in their entirety and it may well be that the Senate majority after the next election could still be in the hands of the Tories," argues Victorian CEPU (Communications and Services Division) Secretary Len Cooper.

"Thus the worst aspects of the current IR legislation could still be in place until 2011 at the earliest."

While supporting the initiatives of the Your Rights at Work campaign, he argues that we "need to prepare to use the combined industrial and organising strength of the work force to fight these vicious laws. "In my view we should begin by establishing a coalition of supportive unions, and begin the preparatory work necessary."

This means "deciding on the groups of workers who should consider striking, establishing, publicising and building of a fighting fund, [and] examining and working on the difficulties that stand in the way."